Crossing
by TwinEnigma
Summary: He dreams, caught in between the eddies of somewhere and somewhen, alone and unseen. And then, one day, he dreams of something he has never had. Epilogue-compliant... Sorta.


_**Crossing  
**_

_by TwinEnigma_

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Harry Potter or related characters, et cetera. I do this for fun and not profit._

**Warnings:** _Existentialism, dreams; see end for notes  
_

* * *

_Once upon a time, Chuang Chou dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily enjoying himself. _

_He didn't know that he was Chou. _

_Suddenly he awoke and was palpably Chou. _

_He didn't know whether he were Chou who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly who was dreaming that he was Chou._

* * *

He dreams.

Broken and alone, caught in the eddies of somewhere and some_when_ between time and place and circumstance, he _is_ and it is there that he _is/was/has been._ He is naught but fragments of blood and bone, spirit and will; it is an existence of suffering, of agony. Neither awake nor asleep, still he dreams – nightmares all – and in this state, alone and quivering with pain, he cries out, unheard and unseen by all that pass him by.

And then, one day, he dreams of something he has never had.

* * *

Ginny dreams.

She dreams of fields of wildflowers, sprayed with sunlight and gleaming in the warm spring sun. They feel like silk against the palm of her hand as she walks through the field. She laughs, looking up at the sky which is blue, bright and almost white, and then she finds her gaze pulling down, as if through gravity, to rest on the familiar figure of Harry. He sees her and laughs, smiling bright and wide, and he is _so warm_ when her arms latch around him. Around them, the flowers burst into the air, tossed on the wind of their movement; _portkey_, her rational mind supplies from somewhere, and it's so simple, so logical - of course it's a portkey, how silly of her. London rises around them, all lines and slopes of glass, steel and stone, as they walk, hand-in-hand, and they are happy.

Somewhere in the distance, she can hear cries.

"Someone is crying," she says, pausing. "Can't you hear it?"

Of course he can: it is, after all, her dream.

* * *

Harry dreams.

He dreams of Ginny, her face haloed by the light of the sun. He dreams of the way her hand slips effortlessly into his own and of walking through London like all those couples he'd seen long ago on the telly – ridiculously, wonderfully in love and happy, content in the very presence of each other. They laugh, fingers tangled in each other's clothes.

The sun slips behind the clouds and, in the distance, he can hear crying.

"It's coming from over here," he says. He _knows_, in the way everyone does when they dream, because it is his dream and in his dreams, he is as clever as he wants to be.

He leads her into a building he thinks he has seen before – and maybe he has, long ago – and through throngs of people that are little more than a blur of faces and bodies, all the while following the sound of crying. As they get closer, all other noises seem to fade away, melding into an indistinct white noise. All that is left is the sound of crying – a child's cry, he realizes distantly_._ It's like an echo across his memories that he can't quite place, somewhere between instinct and shadowy edges of a night bathed in jade light, and the thought _horrifies _him on some base level, the level that _knows/understands/is always_ watching his parents die on that night.

He hurries, urging Ginny to follow. There's _still _time.

In his dreams, there is no such thing as _too late._

* * *

Ginny dreams of cries on the wind.

She dreams of Harry, his warm hand guiding her as they search for the elusive sound. They travel down roads half-remembered and through places they have been once upon a childhood long since passed. All the while, people pass them by in a never-ending, faceless tide, seemingly indifferent to the cries piercing the air.

Alone, she and Harry push against the tide, struggling not to get swept away by the waves of humanity, until they at last come to a bench. It sits there, a proverbial island of calm in the center of a storm, and she is suddenly aware that the sound of crying is coming from beneath this bench. She finds herself moving without thought, stooping and gathering a bundle of quivering, bloodied rags into her arms. She stands, hands instinctively finding their way to the same position she'd used on her nieces and nephews, and begins to rock back and forth slowly.

On her lips is an old lullaby she can barely remember and in her heart is a sense of _familiarity_, of _rightness_.

The crying stops.

* * *

Harry dreams.

There is a sudden wash of terror that slips across his mind as he sees the bloodied bundle in Ginny's arms, a vague recollection of another bundle, one with contents far more sinister, invading his dream. His body moves closer of its own accord, hand reaching for the rags with an eerie calm and fluidity even as he distantly tries to recall that it cannot be this sinister _thing_ of his memory: Voldemort is dead, never to return.

"It's a child," Ginny says, peering down into the bundle.

And it _is._

To be precise, it is an infant and it is an ugly thing, in much the way that all newborns are. It is raw and red from crying, still slick with the blood and ichor of birth, and yet it is worlds away from the _thing_ of his nightmares about that graveyard so long ago. But why was it here? Why did no one seem to notice this child? Couldn't they hear it crying?

But then again, he thinks, the edges of memory slip-sliding through to the _now:_ then, they had never noticed him either and the thought brings a fresh rage to his heart, one that rapidly sputters and flickers out with the ephemeral shifting of dream-realization.

_Oh,_ he thinks.

_Oh._

Fragments of a half-remembered conversation with Hermione wash over him like surf upon the seashore: _when you dream, your subconscious is sorting things out._ And he is dreaming – or possibly lucid dreaming, he supposes – so it makes sense that maybe the infant isn't an infant, but an old wish that someone would have heard him crying, so long ago, and come to his aid. Or maybe it is something older still, an old longing for what he was robbed of in his childhood that he still can't quite shake.

He leans into Ginny's shoulder, one arm snaking around her waist and the other raising, guiding his free hand to support the child's head. Ginny looks to him, smiling, and then looks back down at the infant.

Perhaps it is a dream of what kind of father he wants to be.

_Yes_, he decides. That must be it.

He smiles.

It's a good dream.

* * *

He dreams.

He dreams of being seen and heard.

He dreams of hands that gather him together, wipe the blood and filth from his weak and powerless body, and wrap him in blankets. He dreams of being held, warm and safe, in arms that are gentle and the soft murmur of lilting, soothing words that chase away the pain. In his dream, he does not quite recognize the red-headed woman that holds him, nor does he quite recognize the dark-haired man by her side, helping her cradle his head, but they are both somehow familiar.

Unbidden, a hazy memory slides to the surface of his awareness, one both worn and yellowed around the edges. It surrounds him with the scent of milk-safety-_mother_ and the sound of _not-milk-father_ talking in a soft, soothing tone. Their faces are blurred and indistinct, smeared by time, but he _remembers_ her hair is red and his is dark and the way the light reflects off his glasses. He remembers laughing, safety, being _loved_.

These are not his memories, he knows that. Nothing about this is real. It is merely a dream and yet...

Still…

More and more, he thinks it would not be so terrible if it was real. There is a part of him, a part that is still that child in that orphanage, which has always dreamed of this, even when he could not admit it to himself. What child there had not dreamt of what it was to be held and loved and truly comforted when they cried? What child there had not dreamt of having family, of a true _home_? Even he, who had little understanding of such things, had done so in some fashion.

He _wants _it to be real, he realizes and he wants it as he has never wanted anything before.

And who is he to say that it is not real? Perhaps, he supposes, they _could_ be his parents and he their son, dreaming of having been such a man. The agony he'd endured and all these terrible memories could be nothing more than nightmares.

_Ah, _he decides. That must be the truth of it then – and it _is_, because he wants it to be so and when he wants something, he _gets_ it.

He smiles as he dies and is born in the same instant, letting the nightmares of being a man fade away on the strains of a lullaby to dreams of things that babies are supposed to dream of. And in that moment, he is content.

He dreams on, free and whole at last.

* * *

It is sunlight that wakes Ginny. Warm and bright, it floods the bedroom and she resists the urge to pull the sheets over her head and roll away from the intrusive light. Instead, she lies there in the sunlight, beneath her tangled sheets with the lingering echoes of a dream resting on the edge of her conscious mind, and, blinking, she tries to keep the memory of what it was about before it disappears completely.

Next to her, Harry stirs. He frowns a little as he tries to shield his eyes with his arm, but it, like he himself, is not yet awake nor still fully asleep and his arm drops too heavily. He grumbles a little, rough with sleep, and slowly drags his arm down before finally opening his eyes.

"Morning," he manages.

"Morning," she says and smiles at him.

They lay there, under the tangled sheets, basking in the warmth of the sun and each other, for a moment. It almost feels like a dream.

"What are you thinking about?" he asks.

"A dream," Ginny says, but the fragments of it are slipping through her mind as sand through a sieve and she cannot hold onto it.

"Was it a good dream?" Harry asks.

"I think so," she replies and shakes her head, laughing a little. "I can't remember."

"Mm," he mumbles in agreement, rolling onto his side. "I had a dream, too."

"Oh?" she asks, arching an eyebrow.

"Can't really remember," he says, pressing his forehead against hers as he smiles sleepily and closes his eyes. "But it was good."

Ginny smiles at him and, idly, turns her attention to the gentle fluttering in her abdomen. Her hand slides gently over her growing baby bump and comes to rest over the source of the sensation. "Harry, do you think he can dream yet?"

"Mm," he mumbles, still half-asleep.

"What do you think he's dreaming about?" she asks.

"Oh, I don't know," Harry replies with a yawn. "Whatever babies dream of, I guess."

"I hope it's a good dream," she says and means it.

"It is," Harry says and, somehow, _knows it_.

* * *

A few months later, James Sirius Potter is born.

He is a happy thing, with his father's hair and, when the color finally settles, his mother's eyes. As babies go, there is nothing particularly striking about him in the slightest. If there is anything at all remarkable about him, it is that he knows he is well loved and is all the happier for it.

When he dreams, he dreams only of the things children dream of and nothing more.

After all, what else should he be dreaming of? 

* * *

_**AN:**_

_This is one of those unique circumstances situations._

_Harry is a master of the Hallows, who used to be a Voldemort horcrux, and decides his dream is of the kind of father he will be. Ginny was once possessed by a half of Voldemort's soul thanks to the diary horcrux and, in her dream, her instinct is to sooth and comfort in the manner of a mother. Both are intrinsically connected to him, so when he reaches for someone in his dream, his subconscious pulls them to him, but they are the ones to shape how he appears and how his dream alters with their interaction - they see an infant howling in distress, so he is an infant in his dream. Also, Voldemort would probably never feel genuine remorse. But the most basic desire of a child for love and belonging? Ah... that he **might** have, as twisted as it had manifested in him, and coupled with his force of will and magic and the unique nature of his connection to both Harry and Ginny, as well as Harry's status as a master of death..._

_Well, he gets what he wants. Unfortunately - or rather, **fortunately**, he'll never remember it, since he quite literally willed himself as he was into nothing more than an infant's fleeting nightmare._

_And why James Sirius? Well, Albus Severus would have been too obvious. Also, if these shenanigans were going to occur, it'd totally be with Harry and Ginny's firstborn, just saying. Besides, it would make better sense with the idea that as a child, Tom likely had an image of his "ideal" family and that his features came from both of them._


End file.
